Summary & Analysis

Karl Marx (1818–1883)

Themes, Arguments, and Ideas

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, page 2

page 1 of 2

Summary: First Manuscript

“Estranged Labor”

Under the economic system of private ownership, society
divides itself into two classes: the property owners and the property-less
workers. In this arrangement, the workers not only suffer impoverishment
but also experience an estrangement or alienation from the world.
This estrangement occurs because the worker relates to the product
of his work as an object alien and even hostile to himself. The
worker puts his life into the object and his labor is invested in
the object, yet because the worker does not own the fruits of his
labor, which in capitalism are appropriated from him, he becomes
more estranged the more he produces. Everything he makes contributes
to a world outside of him to which he does not belong. He shrinks
in comparison to this world of objects that he helps create but
does not possess. This first type of alienation is the estrangement
of the worker from the product of his work.

The second type of alienation is the estrangement of the
worker from the activity of production. The work that the worker
performs does not belong to the worker but is a means of survival
that the worker is forced to perform for someone else. As such,
his working activity does not spring spontaneously from within as
a natural act of creativity but rather exists outside of him and
signifies a loss of his self.

The third form of alienation is the worker’s alienation
from “species-being,” or human identity. For human beings, work
amounts to a life purpose. The process of acting on and transforming
inorganic matter to create things constitutes the core identity
of the human being. A person is what he or she does in transforming
nature into objects through practical activity. But in the modern
system of private ownership and the division of labor, the worker
is estranged from this essential source of identity and life purpose
for the human species.

The fourth and final form of alienation is the “estrangement
of man to man.” Since the worker’s product is owned by someone else, the
worker regards this person, the capitalist, as alien and hostile. The
worker feels alienated from and antagonistic toward the entire system
of private property through which the capitalist appropriates both
the objects of production for his own enrichment at the expense
of the worker and the worker’s sense of identity and wholeness as
a human being.

Analysis

The 1844 Economic and Philosophical
manuscripts remained unpublished during Marx’s lifetime and did
not surface until 1927, some forty-four years after his death. These
manuscripts illustrate the young Marx’s transition from philosophy
to political economy (what is now called economics). Marx’s emerging
interest in the economy is apparent here—an interest that distinguishes
him from other followers of Hegel—but his writing in these texts
is much more philosophical, abstract, and speculative than his later
writing. For example, the concept of species-being, of what it means
to be human, is essentially a philosophical question. These manuscripts give
us a glimpse into Marx’s intellectual frame of reference and into the
philosophical convictions that underlie his later, less explicitly philosophical
work.

In the first manuscript, Marx adopts Hegel’s concept of
alienation, the idea that human beings can become out of sync with
the world they live in, but he interprets this concept differently,
arguing that alienation arises from the way human beings regard
their own labor. In these early manuscripts, Marx reveals himself
as the great philosopher of work, which he sees as a process of
transforming physical matter (raw materials) into objects of sustenance.
This process is fundamental to a person’s identity and sense of
place in the word, according to Marx. In capitalism, which is founded
on the principle of private property, work as a source of identity
and location is seriously undermined. Those without property (namely, workers
in factories, etc.) must hand over their productive capacities,
their essence as human beings, to another person, to the factory owners,
the wealthy capitalists. This is not only inherently frustrating
and unsatisfying but also turns workers against the capitalists and
the system of private property that is the source of their frustration.